Great Tokyo Air Raid (March 10, 1945)

From November 1944 B-29s flying from the Mariana Islands attacked Tokyo with high-altitude precision bombing, but jet-stream winds and weather limited the results. Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, who took over XXI Bomber Command in January 1945, changed tactics to low-level night incendiary attack: bombing altitude was cut from about 9,000 metres to under 3,000 metres and most defensive armament was removed to increase the bomb load. The target was the densely built, largely wooden shitamachi district of eastern Tokyo.

Operation Meetinghouse was flown on the night of 9-10 March 1945; Japanese sources record the bombing as starting at 12:07 a.m. on the 10th and lasting about two hours and forty minutes. Aircraft counts differ by source: 334 B-29s taking off is the figure most often quoted, while the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles give 325 dispatched, of which 279 bombed Tokyo, from the 73rd, 313th and 314th Bombardment Wings, dropping 1,665 tons of incendiaries (this site previously gave approximately 1,700 tons). Fanned by strong winds, the fires engulfed Fukagawa, Honjo, Asakusa, Nihonbashi and neighbouring wards and burned out about 41 square kilometres (roughly 16 square miles).

There is no agreed death toll. The Metropolitan Police Board recorded 83,793 dead, 40,918 injured, 1,008,005 people made homeless and 268,358 houses destroyed; the US Strategic Bombing Survey gave 87,793 dead and the Tokyo fire authorities about 97,000. Most estimates fall between 80,000 and 100,000, and the total may exceed 100,000 if the missing are included, making it the deadliest single air raid in history. American losses were 14 B-29s and 96 airmen killed or missing. The raid demonstrated the destructive power of area incendiary bombing against Japanese cities, and Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe were attacked in the same way in the following days.

The remains of the victims rest, together with those of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, in the Tokyo Memorial Hall in Yokoamicho Park, Sumida Ward, where a monument to the air-raid victims holds the register of names. In 1990 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government designated 10 March as Tokyo Peace Day, and the privately funded Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage opened in Koto Ward in 2002. Survivors and bereaved families sued the state for compensation in 2007; the Tokyo District Court ruled against them in 2009.